Breathe Into Me
by AlinaLotus
Summary: ...she could feel the change coming... A story about growing up and finding yourself, finding love, and finding closure.
1. 15 and such a pretty shell

**I've never really done something like this, but I think I'll give it a shot. Each chapter is a new age in Ginny's life. There are five chapters total. **

**Warnings will be posted at the top of the chapters. Also, I know I change tenses a lot, sorry about that. It's probably OOC for Ginny, as well. Each song excerpt at the top of the chapters is from Breathe Into Me by RED (hence the title of this fic). **

_...and this is who I am when I don't know myself anymore..._

She could feel the change coming. Whenever she thought about it, it was explicitly _the_ change, not _a _change. It'd been a while since she'd felt this way, like she was standing on the edge of a rocky cliff, and the ocean was sparkling below, sapphire blue and crested with white waves, begging for her, waiting for her, to plummet into it.

She was fifteen now, on the right side of womanhood, beautiful and young, intelligent, sometimes catty, but an all-around decent person. She didn't have many grudges, didn't have any enemies that she, herself, had made. But now she realized how sheltered her life was, how hidden her parents, with good intentions, had kept her from the world, and likewise the world from her. And now she isn't _that girl_.

"Sirius is dead," she remarks, looking at the back of Harry's head. She gets a vindictive pleasure out of reminding him, out of rubbing course salt in his fresh wounds. Ginny had never thought of herself as truly mean, but a smirk spreads across her face as she sees a tear fall down Harry's cheek and splatter onto his arm.

He was sitting at one of the long work tables of the common room, huddled over a beaten picture of Sirius, James and Lily. He doesn't respond to her, at least not right away, and this irritates her. She will not be ignored, especially by him, any longer. She isn't the quiet, shy little girl groveling after him any more.

"I said," she scathes, raising her voice, "Sirius. Is. _Dead._"

He looks up then, emerald green eyes wide and surprised and full of hurt. She smirks again; she's hit her mark.

"What's happened to you?" He asks. This is not the Ginny who had, of late, become so much more than his best friend's little sister. She was tall and strong and could whip a wand faster than most grown wizards and witches, she was beautiful and mature, but now Harry saw no semblance of that girl in Ginny's face.

"What do you mean, what's happened to me?" Ginny asks, truly taken aback. Was Harry really that self-involved? "Do you think you're the only one who misses him? That you're the only person who's affected by the fact that Sirius sodding Black will never breathe, never laugh, again?"

Sirius had died and taken her with him, and she knew it. He was the closest thing to a best friend Ginny had ever had, and though it'd been over a year since he'd fallen, since he was struck down by his own flesh and blood, the aching in Harry's eyes was nothing, she felt, compared with what was raging inside of her.

"You're not yourself, Ginny." Harry decides, standing up from the table.

"What, is it getting to real for you now Potter? Don't make the mistake of thinking you are the only one who can feel pain, the only one who doesn't know what to fucking do." And Ginny shoves past him and is out in the darkened corridor. It's after hours, but she doesn't care. She needs to get away, to breathe freely for a moment, and that can't happen when all she wants to do is curse Harry into oblivion.

She doesn't really hate him, she knows, but he has disregarded her since she was ten, and a person can only take so much.

But she quietly wishes she could be the person Harry thought she was.


	2. 19 and it comes and goes

**warning: femslash**

_...and this is where I lose myself when I keep running away from you..._

The change never comes, never happens. Or if it does, she doesn't notice it.

Ginny is now nineteen, and absolutely exquisite in her beauty. She turns heads wherever she goes, though she doesn't really notice this. It's been almost four years since she's looked Harry Potter in the face, but he is a fading memory now. She tries to feel sorrow, regret, for the words she so harshly spoke to him, but she's too tired and too busy and hates harping on the past.

She is a different person, now, and she thinks that if she returned her mother's owls and invitations for dinners and various family functions at the Burrow her family wouldn't recognize her. She's still physically the same, long ruby hair and endless freckles, an athletically apt build, but she knows she is not _ginveraweasley_ anymore. She's ceased to be the little girl with braids and innocence splayed across her face for what feels like a lifetime.

She lives in a cottage, by herself, in a small village far away from anybody she's ever known. It's a complete surprise, then, when Gabrielle shows up at her door, looking windswept and like she's just stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. It's been so long since she's seen her, the beautiful Veela descendant, and Ginny wishes for a second that she hadn't spoken the words

that banned Gabrielle from her life.

"Ginny," Gabrielle says, relief dancing on her lips. "Eet is so good to see you." Gabrielle kisses Ginny's cheeks, but Ginny is too stunned to respond. She hasn't seen Gabrielle since Christmas the year before she graduated Hogwarts. She was blossoming then, and Ginny couldn't help but enviously follow the strands of gold in her hair, or the tip of Gabrielle's tongue as it seductively moved across her lips when she ate.

"Whare 'ave 'oo been?" Gabrielle asks, when Ginny has resumed the function of her legs and steps aside, allowing the graceful French woman into her home.

"Here," Ginny says, gesturing around her. The cottage isn't grand or expensive, but it is clean and tastefully furnished. Ginny offers Gabrielle some coffee and disappears into the kitchen for a few moments, and when she comes back she sees Gabrielle has shed her scarf and coat, and is wearing something Ginny thought she'd never see her in--a pair of jeans and a plain gray sweater. She looks fantastic, though, and Ginny feels a wave of heat wash over her.

"Why are you here?" Ginny manages to say, handing Gabrielle the steaming mug.

"I 'ave not seen you for a long time." Gabrielle says this as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"And that's for good reason, I would have thought I made myself clear at that Christmas-" Ginny stops because there's nothing else to say. She said it all that night, when she let her lips, impudent and wanton, run up and down and across Gabrielle's so-perfect-it's-painful body.

"Ginny," Gabrielle stands, and she is almost too close for comfort but Ginny knows that she doesn't really mind. Gabrielle is beautiful and smells amazing, like softness and purity. Ginny takes a step back; she doesn't want to tarnish the creature in front of her again, with her black words and her anger and her utter exhaustion and regret. But Gabrielle slips her hand into Ginny's, and shakes her head. "Silly girl." She whispers, and her lips are coming closer and Ginny's pulse skyrockets.

It comes and goes, the feeling of missing the people she's left behind, but she isn't one of them anymore, and even though Gabrielle sighs into her mouth and tells her again how much she missed her and what her smiles mean to her, and how she forgives her for that night, for the words that negated the sweet touches and the explosions of pleasure, Ginny can't help but wish Gabrielle would leave. Gabrielle has come to save her, but Ginny doesn't want to be saved.

The next morning Gabrielle has made her breakfast in bed, and the girl's blue eyes are full of something Ginny would rather not think about.

But she quietly wishes she could be the girl Gabrielle thinks she is.


	3. 23 and life is black, or white

_...and this is how I break apart when I finally hit the ground..._

She remembers the first time she saw him, when she was eleven and so scared she thought she might piss herself. He was tall and stately, of course, robed in black. That's what she knows him as--black. His clothes are black, his hair is black, his eyes are black, and she believes that his heart is black, too.

It isn't until she is as broken as he is that she realizes the truth.

They are lost, lost people wandering around, going through the motions of daily life, but not really living. Ginny doesn't even think she is surviving, but he, Severus, as done an amazing job thus far, so she tries be like him. She tries to be distant and cold and sometimes that comes off as cruel, but it's not her intention, and it isn't his intention.

He's at the deli she's chosen for her lunch that day, and the first thing she wonders is if this is a dream. He doesn't look old, but hardly aged. He is wearing black slacks and a black turtle neck, and his hair is pulled back from his face in a rubber band. He is well-groomed, something she couldn't say he was when he was her Professor.

"Professor Snape?" She says this as a question because he is not the shattered man he once was, at least not on the outside, and she can't say the same for herself. She would give anything to be able to fool everybody around her that she wasn't a scared, sobbing little girl wishing the world was a happy and truly good place.

He turns to her, a smile creeping up his face as he recognizes her. "Ginerva? My, not the little brat I used to catch sleeping behind her cauldron anymore, are you?"

Ginny tries to match his smile, but she comes up short. She just can't believe that here she is with Severus Snape, talking and joking and acting like they were the best of mates.

"It's been too long," Ginny agrees, and there is something about him now, about his obsidian eyes and the strength of his jaw that she finds utterly appealing, and she doesn't want to turn on her heel and never look him in the eye again, like her instincts are begging her to do.

"Indeed. Won't you sit down?" He gestures to the chair opposite him, and Ginny, after a moment's hesitation, does as he asks.

It is enjoyable, almost. Ginny is relaxed and not herself, and that is something she's been striving for now for as long as she can remember. It's all down to _him_, to Severus. He makes her something she is not, something better.

"I...would like to see you again, Ginerva," he says to her as he walks her home hours later. Their lunch had faded into dinner, and they'd spent the afternoon and early evening walking the small town together.

Ginny looks up at him, unsure of what to say or what to do. He is a different man, a new man, one who has let go of the past and moved on. She doesn't answer him, but she thinks that her lips pressed against his are good enough, for now.

But she quietly wishes she could be the person he now deserves.


	4. 29 and it is slow

**warnings: scenes of suicide**

_...and this is how I disappear when I throw myself away..._

He has become a piece of her now, and she likes to think that maybe he replaced all the bad stuff about her, all the bad stuff inside of her.

She will always think of him as black, but black no longer has the meaning it once did. So when he leaves her, one day, broken on the street, black is all she can see.

He says he's no good for her, that she needs more, and deserves better. The typical dribble of someone not wanting to put up with her any more. She knows he's tired. Tired of her, of her problems, of her inability to do and say the right things. In truth, it comes down to the fact that, despite her adamant claims that she is not _ginervaweasley,_ she is exactly that. She can't be _lilyevans_ and that's what Severus needs and wants and loves.

She loved him, still loves him, even now, when she is tucked away into the corner of her cottage, with the lights off and the last legs of sunset creeping in and fading away through her grimy windows. She wants something painful, because she wants to feel it, feel her life draining away. The letter is written, it's addressed to him, and was mailed this morning. She doesn't know how long it will be before somebody finds her, if they ever do, and she wants to ensure that he knows what he's done to her. She doesn't blame him for this, for the razor in her hand or the deep gashes up her wrists. She is too weak to live without him, and the absolution is simple; she won't.

She wants him to know of the good things he did to her and for her. She was happy, for a time, and those are the memories that will flash before her eyes as Death comes ever nearer. It is slow, and as she loses consciousness she whispers his name.

She quietly wishes she could be the girl she needed herself to be.


	5. 32 and isn't life grand?

_...breathe your life into me, I'm falling, falling faster..._

In the end, he finds her.

In the end, he saves her.

In the end, he never lets her go.

Or that's how Ginny would liked it to have gone. She wishes Severus would have broken down her door and saved her life, wishes he would have held her and kissed her and thanked God that she didn't really die.

She doesn't die, at least not physically. Her heart pumps blood through her (scarred) veins and her reflexes are as good as they ever were. It was Harry that found her in a puddle of her own blood, murmuring the name "Severus" over and over again.

They keep her here--at St. Mungo's--now. Her room is lovely, with a large window and fresh plants every day. None of them, her family or her friends, trust her to be alone anymore. _He_ comes often, but Ginny sometimes pretends he isn't there. It's easier that way, and harder too, but harder still is to watch him leave because shouldn't he take her away from here, save her? He is her prince, after all, and isn't that what princes do?

She explained this to Harry, but he doesn't understand. He hasn't understood her since she was ten and crying into her mother's apron as the Hogwarts Express chugged away from them. But she is grateful for Harry nonetheless because he never told a soul about Severus.

Ginny thinks back on her years, on Hogwarts and the war and Voldemort and Death Eaters, and she can't believe she's come this far. Admittedly a lock down ward in a hospital isn't what most people consider progression, but for herself, for her life, this is where she needs to be.

She is standing in front of her window, and outside she can see a park. It is green and it has tall trees and colorful flower beds and little children running around with their dogs, and people are jogging and laughing and some are eating ice cream. She takes it in, _really takes it in,_ and she thinks that yes, maybe life is grand. She's spent so many years trying to be something she isn't, trying to regain lost innocence and pride, but she knows now that she doesn't get to be any body but herself, flaws, spilt blood and shed tears and all.

"It's lovely, isn't it?" Severus has come up behind her, and he gently wraps his arms around her waist.

She doesn't respond, because she is falling. Falling into him, and she needs him to breathe life back into her. Maybe he will, maybe he won't, but for now, Ginny is content to be in the arms of the one she loves.

**Well, that's the end! I don't know, maybe you hated it, maybe you loved it. Regardless, thanks for reading. Also, if you haven't listened to the song Breathe Into Me by RED, now is the time. It's amazing and was the complete inspiration for this story. **


End file.
